Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.: Does Lincoln have a death wish?

Warning: This story contains major spoilers from Tuesday’s episode of Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Read at your own risk!

With a prophecy promising that one of the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. will fall by season’s end, you’d think they’d all be a little more careful, but Tuesday’s episode proved otherwise.

In a bid to cure Inhumans of Hive’s sway, Fitz (Iain de Caestecker) and Simmons (Elizabeth Henstridge) created an antitoxin, but had no actual Inhumans to test it on. Enter Lincoln (Luke Mitchell), who decidedly takes the antitoxin against orders, knowing it could kill him. “He’s taking some huge risks, wearing the murder vest and taking the antitoxin,” Mitchell tells EW. “He’s desperate to get her back. He needs her. Put it this way, if something were to happen to Daisy, I think Lincoln wouldn’t stay in S.H.I.E.L.D. Daisy is his life. He’ll do anything to get her back.

“He doesn’t have a death wish,” Mitchell insists. “He makes these decisions, but you still see the fear in him when he does this. It’s not just bravado. He cares about his life. He wants to live, he wants to make something of his life, but he doesn’t see anything without Daisy in the picture. He’ll do whatever he has to do, which makes him dangerous.”

His love for Daisy aside, Lincoln’s desperation also springs from the fact that she’s the only person who has been able to keep him somewhat in check when it comes to his anger. “There’s a lot of fear,” he says. “There’s a lot of unknown. You’re starting to see Lincoln do things he’s never done before, especially in terms of his powers. You see a little bit of it when everyone is pointing the finger at him in the containment module when Daisy is actually the traitor. His entire body turns electric and he shocks Yo-Yo. Hang on, we’ve never seen this before. If he’s capable of that, what else is he capable of? It could also be one of those things that Lincoln himself doesn’t even know what he’s capable of when it comes to the depth of emotion and feelings he has. There’s a deep well of emotion in him.”

That was evidenced last week when Lincoln went off the rails while tracking Alisha (Alicia Vela-Bailey), which resulted in him being sidelined. “He feels useless because he’s grounded,” Mitchell says. “The one thing he wants more than anything else, he can’t do anything about. The frustration leads to him taking the antitoxin. Once he does that, and it doesn’t work, then they put him in the containment module for his own benefit, because his immune system is done. It becomes incredibly frustrating.”

That growing rift between Lincoln and S.H.I.E.L.D. could work in his favor. “He uses their connection to make Daisy believe that he really wants out,” Mitchell previews. “It’s not too big of a leap to make, because Lincoln is very much an outsider within S.H.I.E.L.D.”